From: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) Subject: VR, Culture, Education & Politics (was Re: Virtuality and the...) Date: 12 Jan 92 01:23:42 Organization: University of Rochester In article <1992Jan10.024045.12415@milton.u.washington.edu> gavand01@ulkyvx03. louisville.edu writes: >In article <1992Jan8.011919.26834@milton.u.washington.edu>, >yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes: >>In article <1992Jan6.183417.6838@milton.u.washington.edu> julianb@hitl. >>washington.EDU (julian bleecker) writes: >> >>>> [ quoting Druckery ] >> >>>After a half century in which >>>technological development was driven by the political and military >>>demands of the cold war, what is now emerging is a culture driven by >>>image-based technologies. >> >>What Druckery seems to be missing is that culture has been driven by >>technology since the days of paintings on cave walls. Each new >>technology redefines the way in which culture is expressed and >>propagated -- from written language to the printing press to radio to >>television to computer networks to virtual reality and beyond... >I seriously doubt that Druckery is so unaware of >the forward thrust spun out of human/tool interactions. Indeed, he says as >much in the statement you comment upon. Druckery's point, which you seem to >miss, is that the stakes are increasing exponentially. I agree that the changes are increasing exponentially. I disagree that this is a bad thing. Wouldn't it be boring to die in a world that wasn't radically different than the one in which you were born? Actually I think the curve of technology has always been exponential, but it has only been in recent times when we have been able to see the slope change within a single lifetime... >Is it a run-away >train? Are we all lemmings unaware of the sea right over the invisible cliff? We're surfers riding the wave of the future. We can panic and wipe out or hang on and enjoy the ride... >>I think it is certainly worthwhile to discuss the potential societal >>and cultural effects of technology. The problem with most >>"humanistic" critiques is that they seem to overreact to certain >>relatively innocuous aspects of technology (e.g. Druckery's >>incomprehensible fear of scientific visualization) while drastically >>underestimating the long-term effects of technology on human lives. >I totally agree with you there. That is why intellectuals are so effete. >Technology has developed so rapidly, has altered our lives and our environ- >ments in such a transformational, fundamental way, that our language, which >evolves >quite slowly by comparison, has been outstripped. The patterns that our >linguistic and social training have given us are irrelevant in today's >environmental patterns. We need a whole new cognitive structure as a frame >from which we might speak. Actually, I was thinking that the humanists should try to understand the technologies before they critique them. A good "cognitive structure" might be to start learning some science and engineering... >>Informed discussion and speculation -- rather than either >>"mystification" or "critique" -- on the nature a VR-based future >>culture would certainly be interesting, but I think Druckery is >>deluding himself if he thinks VR can be stopped. In my opinion, >>market-oriented technological pressures to develop VR are already far >>beyond the point of the no return. >I agree with the above as well, but I don't think Druckery thinks VR can be >stopped. The issue is not either/or. Either/or is what Americans think in >terms of, but it is a low level of logic. The Orient has had systems of logic >for thousands of years that are inclusive and go beyond that: 1) Is; 2) Is >Not; 3) Is and Is Not; 4) Neither Is nor Is Not. Well, this paragraph sounds pretty either/or to me -- either use a two-valued logic or use a four-valued logic... A more productive view may be to realize that the societal effects of VR will be extremely complex and far-reaching. We may be able to shape this development in some ways, but -- to go back to the surfer analogy -- we may be able to control our location and orientation on the wave, but we won't be able to tell the wave to back up or make a 90 degree turn. For example: pacifists aren't going to be able to stop the military application of VR -- it's already happening (e.g. SIMNET) and it will continue to expand. On the other hand, we may be able to *shape* the way in which VR is applied to education. We currently have millions of students bored out of their minds in public classrooms around the country. Consider the possibilities for a VR learning environment where students can experiment and see how the information they are being taught applies to the real world. This would be especially useful for physics (and the other sciences), where in addition to learning formulas, students could see how these formulas relate to the physical universe. It would also be useful for teaching history -- instead of memorizing dates and places, students could witness and interact with the events of history first-hand. However, this also raises a potential pitfall. Students who experience a particular version of history may have that version even more firmly implanted in their minds. This is actually the standard difficulty of "fairness" in teaching history, but using this modality it may be even more important to represent different points of view... I would be very wary of values-based or politically-oriented VR education -- but it will probably be inevitable, anyway. Consider an anti-drug VR environment where students that use virtual drugs could lose control of their body or their senses and where they could see their "drug-using" friends die horrible deaths. Would you use it, or would you consider it too propagandistic? What about an environmentalist VR about living in a ruined world? What about a capitalist VR that showed the poverty and oppression of living in a Marxist society? What about an anti-war VR that showed the horrors of war and the suffering of innocents? What about a pro-war VR that showed the glories of battle and the atrocities commited by the enemy? I don't think you can prevent those who would use VR for political indoctrination. In the hands of a totalitarian government, VR technology could have some truly nasty uses... Fortunately, totalitarian governments have been falling at a gratifying rate in recent years. In free countries, I think the technology will become sufficiently available for all sides to encode their worldviews in their own virtual worlds. If HCI writes a VR where you get shot by an armed burglar, NRA can produce a VR where you use your handgun to defend yourself against that burglar -- then they can argue over whose version of reality is closer to the truth.